SUMMER DVD'S; Six Moral Tales (1963-72)

By CHARLES TAYLOR

Published: May 7, 2006

The most famous line of criticism about the films of Eric Rohmer came not from a movie critic but from a movie, Arthur Penn's ''Night Moves,'' in which a character returns from seeing ''Claire's Knee'' and announces that it was ''like watching paint dry.'' There's no getting around the element of boredom that hangs over even Mr. Rohmer's best films. It's not that the characters talk and talk and talk (you could say the same thing about any of the great Howard Hawks movies), it's that they exist so fully inside their own heads that the prattle can drive you a bit batty. When Mr. Rohmer's movies fail, it's because he has failed to be sufficiently satirical or empathetic enough to get us past that self-absorption. When he succeeds, as he does in his masterpiece, ''Summer (Le Rayon Vert),'' he can make us feel a kinship with the most self-absorbed of characters, make us feel like we are seeing ourselves. The work he did under the heading ''Six Moral Tales'' remains his best known, and this Criterion set brings together not just the early shorts, but also the better-known features that close the series, like ''Claire's Knee'' and the nearly insufferable ''Love in the Afternoon'' (better known to some viewers as ''Chloe in the Afternoon''). It's a measure of how good Mr. Rohmer can be that the best of the six, the 1969 ''My Night at Maud's,'' is his most cerebral. And at first it's purgatorial. But the film opens up during the long conversation between a priggish Roman Catholic biologist (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and a woman (the luscious Fran?se Fabian) he spends a chaste night with. Their talk is a dance between his na?t?nd her worldliness that springs from a discussion of Pascal. Mr. Trintignant's character is every bit the idiot that Ms. Fabian's, not without tenderness, says he is, but one who is capable of self-realization. And as he sees in himself the rigidity he despises in Pascal, you experience the special grace that Mr. Rohmer's work can achieve. He brings you to an empathy you never imagined feeling. (Criterion, Aug. 15, $99.95) CHARLES TAYLOR